Immigration History

The Supreme Court of Canada’s 1985 Singh decision had far-reaching implications for refugee rights in Canada. The Court ruled that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms applied to every person who is physically present in Canada and that this entitled them to fundamental justice under the law. Therefore, refugee claimants had the right to a full oral hearing of their claims during the refugee determination process.

From the filles du roi to assisting Syrian refugees in 2015, colonial and Canadian authorities used concepts of family as part of their effort to control and shape immigration. The resulting policies promoted “desirable” settlers and discouraged or blocked those imagined to be “undesirable,” often intersecting with other prejudices, including those based on “race,” age, and sexual and gender identity.

Historian Steven Schwinghamer maintains that public expertise operates in historic sites, including Pier 21, in deep and important ways, whether it is engaged by the institution or not. Creating an open exchange between visitors and the institution will enable the institution to learn from their visitors’ organic knowledge of the past.

Following the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, 11,200 Prague Spring refugees were resettled in Canada. This movement included many experienced professionals and skilled tradespeople. This article examines how these refugees navigated language training and barriers to employment, including professional accreditation, and examines how this experience shaped bureaucratic and public views of refugee integration. This article focuses on resettlement and integration efforts in Ontario, since roughly half of the refugees were permanently resettled in the province.

In the early 1970s, concerned Canadians, government officials, and the mainstream press responded to the Canadian government’s implementation of an official policy of multiculturalism with expressions of support, concern, suspicion, and opposition. Meanwhile, the issues connected to multiculturalism that were published in the press ranged from national unity, Indigenous and ethnocultural representation in politics, the values of multiculturalism versus the ‘melting pot,’ and the place of ethnocultural identity in Canada.

by Jan Raska, PhD, Historian

This article is the result of an exploration of the Museum’s oral history collection to answer the question: why do some French-speaking people decide to settle in a majority English-speaking area? The reasons can be complex, but language is one major “pull” factor. Video clips from interviews with Ben Maréga, Saïda Ouchaou-Ozarowski, and Quitterie Hervouet help us understand how language influenced their decisions to live in Winnipeg, Vancouver, and Toronto.

In February 1998, widespread ethnic tensions led to an outbreak of armed conflict between the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Some 350,000 Kosovars fled to neighbouring countries in search of safe haven. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) appealed to the international community to provide these refugees with temporary protection until they could return home. In 1999, over 7,000 Kosovar refugees arrived in Canada.

In September 1973, Chile’s military staged a coup d’état leading to the removal of Salvador Allende, the country’s first socialist to be democratically elected as president. The military regime’s subsequent campaign of repression forced some 200,000 Chileans to seek safe haven elsewhere. Heightened public awareness and lobbying pressured the Canadian federal government to loosen existing exclusionary immigration criteria. This permitted nearly 7,000 refugees from Chile to enter Canada.